Empire and Nation : The American Revolution in the Atlantic World

by Gould, Eliga H.; Onuf, Peter S.

• ISBN13: 9780801879128
• ISBN10: 0801879124
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-01-11
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

How did events and ideas from elsewhere in the British empire influence development in the thirteen American colonies? What was the effect of the American Revolution on the wider Atlantic world? In Empire and Nation, leading historians reconsider the American Revolution as a transnational event, with many sources and momentous implications for Ireland, Africa, the West Indies, Canada, and Britain itself. The opening section situates the origins of the American Revolution in the commercial, ethnic, and political ferment that characterized Britain's Atlantic empire at the close of the Seven Years' War (1756--1763). The empire then experienced extraordinary changes, ranging from the first stirrings of nationalism in Ireland to the dramatic expansion of British rule in Canada, Africa, and India. The second part focuses on the rebellion of the thirteen colonies -- touching on slavery and ethnicity, the changing nature of religious faith, and ideas about civil society and political organization. Finally, contributors examine the changes wrought by the American Revolution both within Britain's remaining imperial possessions and among the other states in the emerging "concert of Europe." The essays in Empire and Nation challenge facile assumptions about the "exceptional" character of the republic's founding moment, even as they invite readers to think anew about the complex ways in which the Revolution reshaped both American society and the Atlantic world.

Author Biography

Eliga H. Gould is an associate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire. Peter S. Onuf is the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor at the University of Virginia.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors	vii
Introduction
Eliga H. Gould and Peter S. Onuf	1	(18)
PART I: Reconstituting the Empire
1 Fears of War, Fantasies of Peace: British Politics and the Coming of the American Revolution
Eliga H. Gould	19	(16)
2 The First Union: Nationalism versus Internationalism in the American Revolution
David C. Hendrickson	35	(19)
3 War and State Formation in Revolutionary America
Don Higginbotham	54	(18)
4 John Adams, Republican Monarchist: An Inquiry into the Origins of His Constitutional Thought
Richard Alan Ryerson	72	(21)
5 Revising Custom, Embracing Choice: Early American Legal Scholars and the Republicanization of the Common Law
Ellen Holmes Pearson	93	(22)
PART II: Society, Politics, and Culture in the New Nation
6 The Ratification Paradox in the Great Valley of the Appalachians
Mary M. Schweitzer	115	(21)
7 Similarities and Continuities: Free Society in the Tobacco South before and after the American Revolution
Steven Sarson	136	(23)
8 The Irish Immigrant and the Broadening of the Polity in Philadelphia, 1790-1800
Maurice J. Bric	159	(19)
9 Dionysian Rhetoric and Apollonian Solutions: The Politics of Union and Disunion in the Age of Federalism
Melvin Yazawa	178	(19)
10 Civil Society in Post-Revolutionary America
Marc Harris	197	(20)
11 Religion, Moderation, and Regime-Building in Post-Revolutionary America
Robert M. Calhoon	217	(22)
PART III: The American Revolution and the Atlantic World
12 The American Loyalist Diaspora and the Reconfiguration of the British Atlantic World
Keith Mason	239	(21)
13 Early Slave Narratives and the Culture of the Atlantic Market
James Sidbury	260	(15)
14 The British Caribbean in the Age of Revolution
Edward L. Cox	275	(20)
15 Freedom, Migration, and the American Revolution
Trevor Burnard	295	(20)
Notes	315	(58)
Index	373